The Bell Curve is a mammoth study of the effects of intelligence on social trends. Herrnstein and Murray seek to show that intelligence is the relevent predictor for things such as socio-economic status and unemployment. They then use their study to propose public policy based on this information; they claim this with help to destratify the rising high IQ upper class from the low IQ underclass. They were able to get a lot of press for this massive book by including a completely irrelevant section on ethnicity and intelligence (I’ll bet you can guess what they said). It’s fascinating reading if you can stomach 600 pages of statistics laden writing. If your like me and can only cope with the most basic of math then it is a book that takes some amount of dedication, and in the end might not be worth the trouble.

Before I hit on the law, I’d like to try and come to grips with what I found to be the major flaw of the book. There is nothing new in this discussion, it has been rehashed much better elsewhere. I think that the authors make some basic assumptions in their work that can’t be justified, and this is one of the things that has made the text so controversial. They fail to take into account basic cultural things that I just can’t conclude (even after their extensive proofs) don’t come into play more. For example, they attempt to show that IQ is for the most part set at birth and is not effected by years of education. However, the flaw is that they treat all education as equal. The result is that they assume two people with high school diplomas are similarly situated. This just isn’t the case. My high school education from Thomson High School in Thomson, GA prepared me much better for the SAT (a test they specifically address) than say a student at M.S. Palmer High School in Marks, MS. It doesn’t have a thing to do with the intelligence or race of the students in Marks. It has everything to do with the amount of opportunity embodied in the two different school systems. In the same way they show that Asians have a higher IQ than whites, especially in the area of maths. However, the cultural background emphasizes math and that sort of thinking. Thus culturally math is taught (if you don’t believe me have a look at Chinese school children and their abacuses). I don’t dispute that some portion of IQ may be genetic, but the study seems lacking to show that it works to the extent the authors claim. It excludes that the brain tends to be a muscle that can be exercised and can be developed.

The author’s claim that the main purpose of their book is to address public policy concerns, so I’ll leave all the nature versus nurture talk to the pros. As this is a law blog I’m going to run down the policy that they suggest and its legal implications. For this purpose I’ll simply accept their assertions about intelligence and get to the meat of what they suggest, which I at times find more problematic than their genetics discussion.

First, I think it should be pointed out that the authors are quite naive when it comes to the results of what they suggest. Early on they give a brief summation of the ways in which IQ has been used in the past to disadvantage ethnic and racial minorities. These include immigration policies as well as sterilization laws that were passed in the early 20th century (see Buck v. Bell a 1927 case in which Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld sterilization laws: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough”). Thus the authors are certainly aware of the dangers that racial differentiation have proved to cause in the past. But later the authors, before giving their racial data, seem to be dismissive of the history of racism in the United States. They state, “We cannot think of a legitimate argument why any encounter between individual whites and blacks need be affected by the knowledge that an aggregate ethnic difference in measured intelligence is genetic instead of environmental.” It seems to me that a Havard professor and a Bradley Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute might realize that in the US (and the world in general) “legitimate arguments” aren’t often used to support racism. I agree that study of such things can be extremely important scientifically, but when they begin to base public policy around it, they tread on the exact ground that our forefathers did in cases like Buck v. Bell and risk retrograde motion in society’s achievements.

Their jumping off point for their public policy claim is employment law. They note that both Congress and the Supreme Court (Griggs v. Duke Power) have made it illegal to use intelligence testing in hiring practices, and that this costs the economy up to $80 billion a year. This is due to hiring inefficiencies, which they claim could be beat with an IQ test. I grant intelligence testing is an effective way of determining whether a candidate will be suitable for a job. However, as the authors pointed out early on, this tradition has a history of manipulation. Thus the Supreme Court held that a test should have to do with the skills involved on the job and not general intelligence. Herrnstein and Murray dispute this logic by claiming that general intelligence tests tend to predict job performance better. As you might guess affirmative action also draws their fire, and probably rightly so. They explain the convoluded system which is used to determine whether a business is discriminating or not. But they also forget to put the system in historical perspective, and that we are still feeling the effects socially and culturally of past racism. The systems heart is in the right place, its just an inefficient way of producing the correct results. Thus they point out that the Civil Rights Act did not create a sudden change in blacks being in jobs, but just because those jobs are open to blacks doen’t mean that Blacks have been trained for them. In 1965 education was so ineffective for minorities that the effect of affirmative action would be impossible to feel immediately. The program seeks long term results in changing trends of disadvantage among minorities, who are not as ingrained in the upper eschelons of culture. Thus, they propose a thought experiment in which if all employment laws were abolished would the reader begin to discriminate. Two problems with this experiment. First, they have numerous times pointed out that the average reader is probably well educated and most likely and academic, so no the average reader probably wouldn’t, but the reader isn’t the average American. Second, They have told us statistically that intelligence is the best predictor of job preformance and that statistically a white person is more likely to be the more intelligent person – but suddenly the reader isn’t supposed to use that information. It follows right along with their willing naiveite when looking at racial problems. Essentially, the authors choose to ignore a history of discrimination, which we still feel the effects of today. The government hasn’t fixed the problem, but there is something empty in the authors suggestion.

They also attack the education system. I love this boneheaded quote from way up in the Ivory Tower, “on the whole, America had already achieved enough objective equalization in its schools by 1964 so that it was hard to pick up any effects of unequal school quality.” It is amazing that the South, just integrated had suddenly reached school equality. There are still large portions of the Southeast where de facto segregation still occurs which robs public (black) schools of tax support, because property taxes are voted down while people send the extra money to support private (white) schools. I’m not suggesting that anything illegal is happening, but it seems to me that a declaration of school equality is a bit of a premature and that it occured in 1964 exhibits some sort of backward thinking. They point out the inefficiency of such acts as Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and project Head Start. But even these don’t seem to get the fairest of shakes. For example they discuss how Project Head start works in the short run, but not in the long run. They never address whether this could be a failing of the environmental parameters. A child with intelligent parents is in that environment all the time, a child that is in the Head Start program shows improvement, but when the program ends backslides. This says to me that thereis an advantage to a continuing nuturing and developmental environment. They also point out that there is a neglect of gifted children through funding, but thi seems bit problematic – if there are so few really gifted and their chances of success are already greater, then why spend extra money on them, especially since they are less likely to be a burden to society (wouldn’t this create more of the stratification they claim to oppose?). They suggest that as a solution that 1. the federal government should support programs that enable all parents to choose the school their child attends; 2. A federal prize scholarship program; 3. reallocate some portion of existing elementary and secondary school federal away from the disadvantaged and to the gifted. My main concern is their reliance on the federal system to effect change in state education systems. I’ll not deny some of these may be helpful, but the state system is where change should be made inorder that all children in that state (not just the ones who have parents with enough gumption to send them to a better school) get a better education.

They also investigate affirmative action in Higher Education. Specifically addressing affirmative action in Law Schools and the evidence that came out of Georgetown University by an impromptu study by law student Timothy MacGuire. I must say that I agree with their assertions on affirmative action. While, initially it was to correct racial abuses, it is now used to enrich university life. That being said it should be reformed so that universities “cast a wide net in seeking applicants.” Giving advantage to disadvantaged students, instead of race based advantages, which are becoming obselete in university systems.

While they seem to appeal to liberal ideas and reforms at some points, at others they take on extreme conservatism. It is like they are a wolf in sheeps clothing or a sheep in wolfs clothing. As a whole their public policy comes up short because it seems not to be a progressive thing as they claim, but instead it is an attempt for them to reclaim some sort of historical life style. They exhibit this throughout the book with simple things such as their attatchment to the term “illegitimate” when referring to children. They base this on anthropological work on primitive cultures. Or when they state that they would like to “return to a state of affairs that prevailed until the 1960s, when children born to singloe women . . . were more likely to be given up for adoption at birth.” Or there assertion that to stop children being born out of wedlock the goverment should give unmarried mothers no recourse to child support and unmarried fathers no recourse to visitation (because obviously the mother is always deserving of the child). It seems they want to have their cake and eat it, too. They talk big about a free society, but at the same time want to revert to a culturally oppressed one, in which the government may regulate less, but society still disadvantages and stigmitizes numerous people. The race implications of the book don’t help. They do have some good policy ideas, but being linked so inextricably to race soils them way too much. Basing any new policy on a study that says that blacks are dumber, no matter how effective the policy is unacceptable. They would probably claim that this isn’t their intention. In fact, they make claims about the fact that people won’t discriminate in light on this information, but they have presented no proof on that front. Racism isn’t as dead as they would have you believe; it is alive and well. Reading objectively, the case for the authors racism is in the book: the inclusion of the section on race and intelligence is irrelevant for proving the point they sought to prove. It was included to be inflamatory. Congrats.

A few other legal tidbits from the book that I might include. There is a bit of Ph.D. elitism going on: The authors mention, as advanced degrees Ph.D.s, M.D.s, and LL.B.s. Don’t they know that we lawyers get J.D.s these days or are they still holding a grudge that we get that Doctorate in three years? Later of course they do pay homage to the fact that lawyers can be of great worth (including those that never see the inside of a court room) by gaining favorable decisions or even through such things as jury selection. They also claim that attorneys are likely to be, on average, one standard deviation above the mean intelligence, but of course we already knew that. They claim that the destruction of the concept of negligence in tort law is based on the egalitarian principle that endorses the redistribution of goods to the underpriviledged. I would like to direct them to Torts I – Negligence. They suggest redoing the criminal law system to make it simpler (against dumbing dowm school books, but for dumbing down the law), they completely overlook why the system is complex in the first place: Justice isn’t easy.

“Wha for Scotland’s King and law
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa’?
Let him follow me!”

This is a great little collection of Scottish poetry. It limits itself to stuff written before 1800 which includes Burns but excludes Scott and is fairly well selected. It includes obscure Gaelic ballads as well as some of the most popular verse by Burns. What really sets it apart though is its organization. Instead of the poems being organized by poet or by chronology, they are instead organized topically thus there are sections on Food and Drink, The Sea, Sports and Games, etc. It helps to give a new perspective to the poems as one could, while reading, compare and contrast the representations of the topics. Unfortunately there was no law subdivision, oh well.

As it is a compilation, I’ll hit the law that I found in particular poems. Generally, the section on Kings and Queens is probably as a whole the most topical for law as it deals a great deal with issues of soveriegnty.

“Scots Wha Hae” by Robert Burns – The lines (quoted above and purported to be Robert the Bruce’s speech to his troops before Bannockburn) demonstrates the implicit linkage between the King and the Law that was at work in the middle ages. The two were so joined that if Scotland’s King was not ruling then Scotland wasn’t free (despite liberties that may be given under English rule). Of course we still see vestiges of this today with the Scottish Nationalism movement.

“Remonstrance to the King” by William Dunbar – This was written by Dunbar to protest the matter of his pension. Initially, it lists many of the types of people that would be at the kings court and includes “doctouris in jure.” The list though and the full account give a glimpse into life at the court of James IV.

“An Exhoartation to His Grace the King” by Sir David Lindsey. This is a popular type of work for the time in which the author attempts to tell the King what makes a great ruler. It starts with lines that state that God “of his preordinance,/Haith grantit thee to have governance.” This illustrates the idea that the Kings rule was granted by God and was used to back up the argument that his soveriegnty was unchallengable except by God who will not “excuse thyne ignorance” in governing. Since this is the case the King is told to “keip the observance” of the “lawis” of God. He is later told that in court the King should use both “Justice and Temperance,” and to “Do equale justice boith to gret and small.”

“The Queen’s Marie” (unattributed) – We find a bit of criminal law in this as one of the Queen’s ladies murders her own child. The Queen summarily sentences her to death. When one person embodies all three branches of government then there is no appeal.

“Lines on the Execution of King Charles I” by James Graham. This reflection expresses sorrow over the execution of Charles I. It is legally related because it was one of the first times that a King had his soveriegnty taken from him by the people in a court. It occurred in a trial wherein Charles I challenged the jurisdiction of the court on the grounds that his powers flowed from God and not the people.

“Battle of Otterbourne” (unattributed) – There is a smigden of the law of war here when Lord Percy refuses to surrender to anyone but the head of the Scottish Army; upon being presented with the fact that the leader is dead he hands over his sword with no complaint to the next in command. Despite the fact that the Scottish leader died the troops did not take vengeance on Lord Percy (which would have been a recognized law of war in the day).

“On Thanksgiving for a National Victory” by Robert Burns – In this poem Burns declares that it is wrong to “murder” in war and then give thanks. Burns obviously wasn’t familiar with the idea that not all killings are murder, and the killing of the opposing army in war is one that isn’t murder.

“My Last Will” by Robert Fergusson – Fergusson writes out his last will in verse and signs it. Its the way to go if you don’t have much to leave.

“If anything the physicians, perhaps especially in Scotland, had risen in status and relative importance since the early law tracts were written down, for they were not ranked therein as highly as the poet or the lawman.”

This little genealogical tract is a handy thing if you happen to have Beaton’s in your ancestry (which I do), otherwise you might be better off reading, oh I don’t know, anything else. While it has numerous interesting points about Gaelic society and the Beaton family’s function in that society, it’s writing style doesn’t exactly make it light reading. It, for the bulk of the book, traces anscestry and, even if it’s one your interested in, it can get a bit boring. However, if you are a Beaton and want to know where you came from, then look no further than this book.

It only really doesn’t have much to say about the law. Probably the biggest statement it makes is the extent to which legal papers create a trail through which ancestry can be traced. Bannerman looks to property titles, court cases, tax bills, and numerous other documents that were kept by the governing parties in order to trace the names of these people. Without these state papers the task would have been extremely difficult if not impossible.

Another point that I found quite interesting was a snippet on how doctors (and other learned proffesions) were under Gaelic law granted a status that gave them the priviledges of nobles. He does note that the physicians were not initially ranked as highly as the “poet or the lawman.” That’s just like us lawyers, always putting ourselves first.

He also points out that physicians were considered to be wealthy even back then as a poll tax set by Parliment on them was quite high.

“Laura was, is, a lawyer, although when I met her she was a different kind of lawyer to the one she is now: then, she worked for a legal aid firm (hence, I guess, the clubbing and the black leather motorcycle jacket). Now, she works for a City law firm (hence, I guess, the restaurants and the expensive suits and the disappearance of the spikey haircut and a previously unrevealed taste for weary sarcasm) not because she underwent any kind of political conversion, but because she was made redundant and couldn’t find any legal aid work.”

High Fidelity tells the story of a record store owner, Rob, with a lawyer girlfriend who doesn’t want to grow up but feels that he is being forced to, so he rebels like a little teenager. She moves out because he acts like a prat then he does all the classic man moping while she’s gone. Nick Hornby’s book is not quite a compelling story, but it’s not a bad read either, and men will identify with the childish behavior of Rob, becuase, hey, that’s what we do best.In this book there is a definite representation of lawyers as “grown ups”. Rob’s girlfriend, Laura, is a lawyer who had “radical spikey lawyer hair” and worked with a legal aid firm when Rob first met her. But Rob is concerned that she has changed as she is now a “different kind of lawyer” working with a City firm in London. She has traded in her spikey hair for expensive suits. He does note that she was made redundant at her legal aid job and couldn’t find more legal aid work, but he is still uncomfortable with the change. He claims that because she could no longer worry about “tenant’s rights, and slum landlords, and kids living in places without running water” that she has become intense about work due to her work load and the pressure of working for a big firm and trying to impress the partners, etc. Laura is a “lawyer by profession and a lawyer by nature.” To add to this she enjoys her job, and this is what makes Rob uncomfortable: the corporate lawyer is a grown up, powerful position, and he feels unease not only at having one as the bread winner of his relationship, but also at hanging out with more of them. He feels that he can’t justify his place in life to the suits, and doesn’t want to (when he makes a list of dream jobs “nobody asks how to spell solicitor”). Lawyer’s to him are “are people who own dogs and babies and Tina Turner albums.”

There is also a great deal about the politics of sex and it is often defined in legal terms. For instance Rob, while on hiatus from Laura sleeps with an American musician who claims that “sex is a basic human right.” Later when she comes to see him he thinks in his mind that that the one night stand should be the end of their contact: “that is the law of this country.” Even a married couple feels compelled to defend their monogamy to Rob as if “its against the law because we’re [Londoners] all cynics and romantics” and he is there to arrest them. Mostly these legal terms come from Rob and his insecurities about relationships, but a deeper commentary about law, gender, and the body can be detected. He describes dating as an adolescent in terms of “Attack and defense, invasion and repulsion . . . it was as if breasts were little pieces of property that had been unlawfully annexed by the opposite sex – they were rightfully ours and we wanted them back.” The property analogy is one that certainly historically has legal implications, but maybe Hornby represents a somewhat more hopeful picture. Rob does views women through mysoginistic lens (e.g. he is terrified that Laura will sleep with Ray, but he immediately goes and sleeps with Marie and has cheated on Laura before), but throughout the novel he is confronted with Laura’s power, which I would argue is why Hornby caste her a a lawyer (and particularly a corporate lawyer). As a lawyer she is able to, as a character, draw on a host of suppositions about the intelligence level and the power of the proffesion. Rob is confronted by this as well as her power in the relationship being the one that not only makes the money but also makes independant decisions. Rob must learn to cope with his insecurities due to the strength in Laura’s character that will not bend to control by Rob. Thus in the end a Laura has gained a significant bit of power back and overcome traditional legal setbacks that accompany her gender, and she does this as a lawyer.

“It must have been worth while having a mere ordinary plague now and then in London to get rid of both lawyers and the Parliment.”

Somewhere between a travel guide and a satirical victorian novel, Three Men in a Boat is a crafty piece of writing that takes the reader up the Thames river from London to Oxford with three men weary of the city but not quite adept at coping outside it’s bounds and a dog who at times seems more like a kidnap victim than a pet. Jerome, leads us up the river with a self deprecating narrator and his two pals, all of whom know exactly what they are doing but have no idea how to do it. The trip itself is laden with comedic tales, historical lessons, and sublime meditations on the beauties of nature. I found it a great read and highly reccomend it.

As for the law. It comes in a few different divisions. Probably the largest chunk could be looked at as Legal History. As the trip goes up the river the narrator points out numerous sights where Kings and Queens have inhabited. The first with real legal connotation is when he is at Runnymede where in 1215 Magna Carta was signed on Magna Carta Island in the middle of the Thames. He recounts the story as if he were there amongst the barons who were forcing the hand of the slippery King John. The narrator also notes that Magna Carta was “translated to the common people some four hundred and odd years later by on Oliver Cromwell, who had deeply studied it.” The trip then passes Old Windsor where, according to Jerome, Earl Godwin was “proved guilty by the justice of that age of having encompassed the death of the King’s Brother.” Godwin apparently said that if he was guilty the bread that he put in his mouth would choke him, and it did. Finally they pass through Reading where Parliment would move to if there were a plague in London and the “Law followed suit” in 1625.

Property law is addressed in a scene where the trio are on the bank of the river and man comes up and asks whether they are trespassing. After a comical exchange they send him away and note that he was only after a bribe and the best way to handle these situations is to “offer your name and address, and leave the owner, if he really has anything to do with the matter, to summon you, and prove what damage you have done to his land by sitting down on a bit of it.” This interaction though leads to a short diatribe at the riparian land owner on the Thames who placards up no trespassing signs, and that this selfishness creates an urge in the narrator to hammer the placards down on their heads. It reminds me of that Tesla song. Of note here though, is that under common law there was no need for the owner to show damage only that the defendant had actually trespasses, so the party could have been held liable.

There is a smidgen of criminal law as George recounts a morning in which he got up too early and wandered about London. It raised the suspiscion of the police who escorted him back home. This scared him a great deal and he “pictured the trial, and his trying to explain the circumstances to the jury, and nobody believing him, and his being sentenced to twenty year’s penal servitude, and his mother dying of a broken heart.” Illustrating the coercive power of the police force to even disuade a person from legal activities. Poor George is later charged with playing the banjo badly in public. The evidence is clear and he is given a six month restraining order. Another run in with the police is suggested when lodging is hard to find. George thinks they could get a free nights lodging by assaulting a police officer, but there is the danger that they would only get hit back, so the thought is abandoned.

Mention of a will is made in which a Sarah Hill, left £1 to be divided amongst two boys and two girls who “had never been undutiful to their parents; who had never been known to swear or tell untruths, to steal or to break windows.” The narrator says that these types of children had been hard to come by and observes that this is alot to give up for 5 shillings a year. I agree.

Finally, there is a funny little moment where the Narrator recalls an attempt by Harris to sing the Judge’s song from Trial by Jury. The lines of which are “When I was young I served a term/ As office-boy to an Attorney’s firm.”

“2001 – 36 people attempt to sue McDonald’s after the famous coffee spilling lawsuit in th US. High Court Justice Richard Field said McDonald’s has no obligation to warn customers about the risk of scalding from a beverage that’s made from boiling water. Hard luck pikeys.”

This was a Christmas present purchased by my wife for me because on the back it says that it is for people who “take soaps from hotels.” At least she knows me well. Really, it is a comical book about living on the cheap in England (which becomes an ever harder task). It’s quite tongue in cheek and starts with a reclamation of the word Pikey. It usually refers to a gypsy or traveller, but Brackstone and Bushell want it to mean so much more. They say it should stand for those proud to value value and find liberty in that which is inexpensive. To be honest, though, it’s a fairly amusing book.

There are just random bits of law. The criminal law is treated with a short discussion of a recent ban on police using the word because it refered “to a particular type of criminal usually from the travelling community.” The authors conclude that a ban on “‘you’re,’ ‘under,’ and ‘arrest’ would have helped more pikeys (however they do note the financial advantages to jail time). They later tell us that the pikey child should hone his criminal skills when young, because that is when he is “out of reach of the long arm of the law.”

In addition to the reference above to the McDonald’s Case, they mention comedian Ken Dodd’s trial for tax evasion (he was acquitted). It also tells us that Johnny Vegas nearly had to sue for the ₤1 that he sold his wedding photos for to Viz magazine.

A few lawyers make the book. When tracing the etymology of the words the authors look twice to usage in Charles Dickens, who was at one point a law clerk. Jerry Springer is a pikey hero, who besides being a famous white trash spokesman is also a lawyer. Cherie Blair is a successful ebayer and a barrister. There is also a reference to Ghandi who studied law in England.

Probably the only real legal theme that runs through the book is that Pikeys should take advantage of the law and live on the dole as much as possible. This can be either through the redistributive power of the welfare state or through the redistributive power of tort claims. Margaret Thatcher makes the book as an enemy of the Pikey because she “made massive cutbacks to [Great Britains] infrastructure, paving the way for capitalism.” This in part damaged the welfare state which “was the linchpin of pikey living.” The pikey, in the author’s view, must be able to get as much out of the state as possible.

“I have instituted proceedings in the High Court against myself for blatant plagarism, as I feel that this sort of thing must be stamped out.” -David Gilmour

Ah, the Floyd, a long time musical obsession of mine. Bruno Macdonald, in this book, has put together a compilation of short articles on Pink Floyd which covers pretty much everything up through the Division Bell album. Its a good selection, too. It includes stuff from die hard fans to the scathing critiques of the band. It also has a crafty little A to Z of all the songs. The highlight of the book for me is the article by Tom Hibbert in which he accuses Roger Waters of being the “gloomiest man in rock,” and having recently seen Roger in concert (at Earl’s Court), I think that I might wholeheartedly agree.

And there are some snippets of law in this baby. Brilliant.

The prevailing legal bit is of course about the Waters v. Floyd in which Roger Waters sued David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason from using the name Pink Floyd after Waters left the band. It is described at one point as a “legal football” of “which one’s Pink?” Waters believed that when he left the band it should have terminated because he was the driving creative force, and fair enough, at the time he was. But that didn’t stop the band from continuing when the original driving creative force left group in the form of a mentally fried Syd Barrett. However, Syd didn’t sue, so who knows. But maybe Water’s had a point as alot of the songs are credited primarily to him (i.e. most of The Wall). Of course I wonder how many of them notice that Mason is the only person to have been in the band from start to finish?

But of course its not all that easy as one finds in a David Fricke article from Rolling Stone article in the book. The real problem began when Waters fired a manager because he assumed Floyd was finished and that contractual obligations could not be completed when there was no band. The manager, Steve O’Rourke, wanted to get the royalty penalties that he felt he was entitled to due to an illegal termination under the contract. Waters apparently offered compromise deals to the others (at this time just Mason and Gilmour), which would have allowed them to retain the name by ratifying his dismissal of O’Rourke. They didn’t bite. So O’Rourke is about to sue Waters and Water’s tells Pink Floyd, “Listen, guys, if those papers come through my door, we all go to court. I am not going to be hung out in court for years and years while you guys are calling yourselves Pink Floyd.” As we all know he sued. Water’s characterizes the suit as a legal issue of who owns a piece of property called Pink Floyd, but recognizes that a court can’t determine “what is or isn’t a rock group.” He even recognizes that “no court in the world is interested in this airy fairy nonsense of what is and isn’t Pink Floyd.” As we all know Gilmour and Mason (and Wright, now) still use the name Pink Floyd so Waters lost out. Unfortunately, I haven’t really researched it enough to give you any more details than that.

There are also a few fleeting references to other law topics. There is an reference to the rise of the psychadellic movement in 1960s London, and its use of pirate radio stations. These were on their way out due to the Marine Offences Act “which was being rushed through the Commons.” This is followed by the police attempts at suppression of drugs, by using raids on the clubs where this music was being played (and taking in a few celebrities too). It does talk about one raid wherein the police searched 750 people and made 11 arrests.

Finally lets not forget that there is mention of one of the great rock songs about the law, “The Trial” off The Wall.